


The Million You Never Made

by haygahr



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Other, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28173903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haygahr/pseuds/haygahr
Summary: Of course it's a mistake, but that doesn't make Cujo's judgment any easier to bear.
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Johnny Marcone
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	The Million You Never Made

**Author's Note:**

> Title credit goes to Ani Difranco. There's definitely more to this story, but we'll see if I get around to the sequel. If you see a typo, lemme know.
> 
> ETA: ao3 says almost 700 of you fuckers read this and no one mentioned that i misspelled "judgment" IN THE GODDAMN SUMMARY. Sheesh.

It takes a specific kind of fool to build a skyscraper in Chicago and put ledges under the windows. The only conceivable purpose would be harvesting fertilizer, but there were more efficient methods than scraping pigeon shit off a ledge sixty stories in the air. And yet, I paid someone to do that.

The alternative was accepting pigeon shit as an implacable reality, and frankly, what else was money good for, really?

Yet, unfortunately, it did absolutely nothing about the current problem.

Interrupting the image of blowsy roseate clouds drifting across Lake Michigan, there was a pigeon, trying to fuck the double glazing.

For all I knew, it might have been trying to fight it, chirruping so deeply I could hear it through the glass. The feathers of his throat stood out in spikes, the color and shape of scarab carapaces. It purred, deeply, and stalked stiff legged along the ledge.

I mimicked it into the phone, a noncommittal hum of sympathy. Ahumada shouldn’t have brought the new recruit in the first place and while I hadn’t explicitly forbidden it, it was only because I’d thought he knew better than that. Still, Jonson was able to ex-fil all of them with minimal other casualties, a veritable miracle for all that I’d be weeks repairing my relationship with the Mayans.

I opened my email, humming into the phone again as the pigeon bobbed its head up and down. The crumpled bit of yellow flesh above its beak had the same unsettling mealy texture off some purebred ducks. Ahumada just needed to vent and I already had Jonson reporting in if he needed to be shifted out of play.

Dresden was back.

I inhaled unavoidably stale office air, for all that a pigeon stood eighteen inches from my left foot and the dusk’s watercolor spill glowed in elegant doubled reflection, through each corner window. The implicit promise Dresden represented sent adrenaline and serotonin lusciously into my bloodstream, better than a shot of espresso.

I smiled and decided to wait for Ahumada to reveal himself, ideally to one of the informants I had created for that purpose exactly.

***

By the time I was able to leave, the clubs had opened downtown. Knots of barelegged white girls teemed, their legs flushing like a mass of scissorblades. It had rained and the air was clear and icy, almost carbonated.

I knew I was smiling, but didn’t bother hiding it. It would have been moot anyway.

Spend enough time staring at the back of a man’s head, and either you start going insane, or learn to read his expressions through the minute interplay of muscles dictating the carriage of his ears. Of course, I didn’t need Hendricks’ ears to flatten millimeters closer to his head as we approached the docks. He didn’t like Dresden.He didn’t like that I liked Dresden. He really didn’t like that I’d slept wth Dresden, twice now, and with any luck a third time very soon.

I did have a very real concern regarding a spate of suspicious illnesses in the NICU at Chicago General to bother Dresden about, but Hendricks knew better, having delivered the evening’s verbal-only briefing while I’d shaved again in the en suite in my office.

He knew I’d made him do it to goad him and so hadn’t said anything about Dresden just to bother me, for all that the microscopic deepening of his forehead lines might as well have been an enter lecture and we both knew he knew I could read it knew it. This was the cost of being able to read your bodyguard’s mind—or at least his ears—he could snark at you the more efficiently. I pity the lords of yore, who had to contend with butlers and valets, no doubt ganging up on them.

And the women. Of course, always the women.

A single deep bark had brought Dresden out on the deck to glare at me in the murky submarine light from the dock bulbs. Her arms were crossed under her breasts, and I was momentarily peeved that I didn’t know if she had her weight on the left leg to conceal an injury or just a tell. She waited for me to approach, her

Taking a note from Hendricks book, I just walked up and stood on the dock four feet away and two below. Her face twitched as she realized my game, and I thought I recognized a smile appearing like a surprise and a little slow to be tucked away.

The shadows under her eyes were so deep they looked like inky thumbprints under her eyes, and she was so pale she nearly seemed a winter fae herself, albeit a far less conceited one than any fae I’d ever met.

A muscle flicked in her temple and she disappeared into the cabin, door open to cast an oblique sliver of light as sweet and golden as canned peaches.

I climbed onto the boat, feeling exactly the sigh Hendricks would be making from behind his binoculars, the creep. I crossed the deck and climbed down the stairs slowly, savoring the mineral and diesel scent of the docks as they were overwhelmed by the exhale of damp, warm air from Dresden’s den. She might have been breathing directly into my face, tangy with exhaustion.

She was sitting on the bed, undoing her boots and I told myself not to get excited.

“I’ve been back here for all of half an hour, and of course you show up, you fucking stalker.”

“It’s not my fault I can see your slip from my office window.”

Her head jerked up, dark-lashed eyes as wide and fearful and honest as a deer’s. I knew I looked smug but couldn’t help it. If I was forced to relocate due to her actions, she couldn’t exactly cite me for the advantages of my new situation, could she? And I’d been saving that for nearly a year, now.

“Christ,” she said finally, putting her face in her hand and I winced at the miscalculation.

“I’ll just tell the sniper to stand down, shall I?”

Her face did not emerge from the broad web of her enormous, practical, clever hands, and I closed the door as quietly as I could behind me. Dresden and I were nothing, really, not personally, not yet. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted us to be, but there were so precious few people who viewed me as an equal and I knew from bitter experience that nothing else was worth wasting my time on.

I considered the agonized path of Dresden’s fingers across her brow and sat at the tiny bench at the kitchen’s galley able.

“Sorry, that was in bad taste.”

She stared at me gain,, and I issued a smile, to no positive response whatsoever.

“Why are you _here_?” sh asked, slumping against the gunnel.

“Tonight, specifically, or in general?” I challenged.

I’d stake my entire career that she’d say— “tonight,” she sounded slightly panicked. Good old Dresden, steady as the tide.

“I have some suspected changelings.”

“Make Gard do it.”

“She does have an actual job, you know. This is a tangential concern.” For which a tangential contractor would suit. I considered coming onto her specifically, but I didn’t know whether she’d agree, and I don’t make a practice of being refused. It’s bad practice.

She sighed, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the side of the boat, and I mentally consigned the condoms in my pocket to a Purgatory of waiting.

Careful to telegraph my movement, I placed her boot on my knees and began unlacing it gently. The tongue when I peeled it back said nine-and-a-half which seemed oddly small until I realized they must be men’s boots. Out in the open, her feet stank richly, of living things, and I identified the dried blood caking the back of her shameful polyester crew socks mostly by feel. I closed my hand over her warm, high, bony arch and she finally animated. “You are not giving me a foot massage.”

I shrugged, and she scoffed, sinking back into the wall, so I pressed into the bottom of her sole with both thumbs.

“No,” she said, finally smiling and jerking her feet away, to sit crouched like an enormous mammalian spider. “What—what are you here for?”

I shrugged and answered honestly. “Curiosity. You are often unfortunately relevant to Chicago and therefore my business. To deliver the information about the changelings,” I nodded at the folder on the table. “If you were interested,” I considered euphemisms for a moment and discarded them, ”to have sex with you.”

“Ugh.” Her leg straightened again. I considered touching it. The bed smelled like her and I didn’t like that it affected me as deeply as it did, semi-erect and itchy with potential.

“To which part?”

A sliver of glittering eye responded. “You gonna eat me out, feed me, and tuck me in?”

I took my phone out, texting Hendricks to place an order at the touristy French fusion place I owned just off the docks—not what I would typically have gone for, but the fastest and most filling option.

“You didn’t.”

“I own a restaurant two blocks from here.”

“I’m not gonna sleep with you,” she yawned enormously like a cat, white teeth showing. I removed myself from the bed and sat back at the kitchen table. Dresden flicked her eyes at me, teasing silently, but really concerned by my retreat.

“Far be it from me to come between you and your rest.” The lack of change in her expression, repeated the question as waves slapped hollowly at the hull. “I’m a businessman, for a certain definition of the word. I understand the concept of investments.”

“I’m _not_ going to date you, Marcone,” she said, and I finally realized how exhausted she must be to be that raw. To have been this unguarded this whole time. Anyone not half asleep already would have noticed the holistic shiver of alertness that ran through me at that. The possibilities alone—

“I can afford a modicum of kindness without demanding an immediate return, my dear.”

The slits of her eyes focused again on me and she sighed enormously before bending in half to wriggle out of shirt and bra both, throwing them on the floor amidst what appeared to be the rest of her closet. I shouldn’t judge, I keep servants.

She shook her head, short-cropped hair grown long enough to tickle her eyebrows and said, “Do you know why fey are so specific in their dealings? Avoid please and thank you, and the like?”

I made a querying noise.

“Because the less specific you are with what you’re buying, the more hold someone has over you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So I shouldn’t thank the delivery boy, and,” I searched briefly for words, finding nothing better, “be rude and unkind to you also? Because courtesy would be too much like invoking debt?”

“There’s a big distance between rudeness and a ‘no strings attached’ foot massage.”

“I didn’t expect you to accept the foot massage,” I said to watch her pout over missed opportunities. “And Iwouldn’t be here if I didn’t like you.”

She stiffened, just as I knew she would, all the long muscles in her bare back and shoulders flickering in an obvious pattern. I should negotiate with naked women more often. “Don’t get too excited. I like your cat, too. And the doorman at my new office. But I imagine it’s hardly a surprise that I like and respect you, given that I keep hiring you, and we’ve slept together.” I shut-my mouth and waited for that to land.

The cold must have been waking her up a little, besides drawing up her nipples—she had lovely enormous brown areolas, like the pupils in a pair of (round/watching) eyes. Dresden huffed out a breath. “Where are you getting off in this, Marcone?”

I flicked a glance at her breasts, and she waved a hand in the air dismissively. Naked, she was even more gangling, and I refused to shift in my seat, even though there was nearly no chance of her noticing.

“There are other women. If you want your dick wet, I’m sure you can order one from around the corner.”

Following her attention, I received the food from a miserable Hendricks on he dock. I chose not to look behind me to see if Dresden in all her half dressed haute-giraffeness was in view.

She was awake enough to dive into the food with ferocious intensity, tearing the top container from my hands and devouring the entire cutlet of a chicken marsala—skinless boneless breast, no wonder I couldn’t remember the last time I ate here—before slowing long enough to take the proffered silverware. God bless Hendricks, he knew how much I hated plastic and had them put real cutlery roll-ups in the bag.

Dresden suitably occupied, I answered her question with my own.

“Why do you have sex with me?”

“Bold!” she said, laughter in her face. I shrugged at our situation. “I mean, I dunno.”

“Mm. You are the only person I’ve slept with in a long time,” full stop, “who did not have a clear an ready answer to that question, despite my attempts otherwise.”

Dresden grimaced around her mouthful of polenta, like a long angry chipmunk. “Ugh.”

I clamped down any response to that, as all of them were too revealing, and merely hummed. I had serious doubts that Dresden would make it from “most women would be swayed by my power” to “you’re one of the only really free agents on this side of the country, much less in my city, and therefore one of the only chances I have before me at a relationship with an equal.” I wasn’t even certain I was braced for that.

Dresden had finished the marsala and torn through half of a truly mortifying dish of salmon (this is _Illinois_ ) and mashed potatoes (I’d almost expect Hendricks of deliberate sabotage, but he would never) before I followed it with “besides the sex is… pleasant.” She threw a boiled carrot at me, which I supposed I deserved for selling boiled carrots.

Besides, the sex was excellent. Even in her awful, tiny berth, with my hand on one wall and feet agains the other, she was groaning beneath me in a slumped pile of limbs rather than any actual “position” but her right hand was pressed between her legs and she was making these deep, guttural means like I’d never heard, totally unselfconscious and sounding like they’d been punched from low in her belly. I wrapped one arm around her ribcage, and pulled her up enough to set my teeth properly in her trapezius, the whole crux of the affair slick and tight and making loud slapping sounds as wet coated our thighs. The groans turned almost into a choked scream as I felt her flutter around me, and, that, well, that’s all she wrote.

Dresden, after, held up one long-fingered hand, and let it be a testament to he power of orgasm, or perhaps merely how long it had been since anybody had tried to high five me that it took so long for me to figure out that was what she wanted.

I slapped her sweaty palm and surprised myself by laughing (at the sheer novelty of it).

Dresden cast me a highly suspicious look, neat and direct amidst the curving walls of the boat and organic shapes of flickering candlelight, shivering as the waves bumped us against the pier. “I still won’t be your anything Marcone.”

“That suits me just fine,” I draped an elbow over one eye but the nausea I’d been fighting didn’t dissipate. I would have taken anti-nausea medication, but that would have meant admitting that I got seasick. “You can take care of yourself, but if you were known to associate wth me as anything other than an occasional contractor, I would have to retaliate against any threats to you. Not that I couldn’t but it would be expensive.”

Dresden laughed at that more than of good mood than humor, and I felt her warm breath touch my shoulder.

I turned my head, but had to shift my whole body to pinch her chin in two fingers and kiss her, sloppy and soft.

Her eyes were still closed when I opened mine and I discarded the impulse to kiss the tender shivering veins of her eyelids, not certain if it was genuine desire or manipulative possibility urging me to play out my hand. I kissed the corner of her mouth again, finding it slack, and drew back.

She exhaled shallowly through her mouth, and placing a hand on the soft, taught skin over her ribs, concluded that, yes, she was asleep.

Three hours later, on the way back home, watching Hendricks judgmental ears all the way into the suburbs, it still felt like an accidental, natural gift , like looking up just in time to watch a bald eagle light on a stop sign and glower at you with one yellow, carnivorous eye. Interpretations and theories flickered through me well into the next morning, but none of them obviated the plain fact of the situation: that flighty, half-feral, powerful, unpredictable, Sir Harry Dresden trusted me enough to fall asleep quite nearly in my arms.

Hendricks glowered at me so deeply, I startled into awareness and packaged it away somewhere less revealing then apparently my entire mien.

“Better?” I asked and he only slid me an oblique look. “Well then we’ll just have to hope the Mayans can’t read me as well as you can.”

He didn’t have to say anything to that. Watching the gelid dark shapes of the city slide by, I began planning.


End file.
